


The Monster in the Fruits Basket

by merryfortune



Category: Yu-Gi-Oh! VRAINS
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fruits Basket Fusion, Angst, F/M, Hurt/Comfort, Minor or Implied Child Abuse
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-16
Updated: 2020-12-16
Packaged: 2021-03-10 22:48:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,875
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28105005
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/merryfortune/pseuds/merryfortune
Summary: When the bracelet is removed, the full extent of the Curse of the Cat takes effect.
Relationships: Homura Takeru/Kamishirakawa Kiku
Comments: 2
Kudos: 2





	The Monster in the Fruits Basket

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Ina_Bon](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ina_Bon/gifts).



> written for Ina_Bon, I hope you enjoy and happy holidays <3

“I don’t like it here anymore, Gramps…” Takeru confessed and he stared at his hands whilst thinking about her. Kiku. “It feels like I’m sitting in a lukewarm bath. I’m just getting pruney.”

His Grandfather regarded him cautiously. Ever with a stern brow and a stern upper lip.

Takeru swallowed. “I want to go out and fend for myself again for a bit. I’m sick of being here. I want to pursue my passions in judo and other martial arts. When we went camping for those few months last year, it was the best time of my life. I feel antsy and dull in comparison to living here. With them.”

“I disagree.” his Grandfather said. “I think you are making excuses.”

“I’m not!” Takeru snarled, he banged his hand on the table.

The door slid and Kiku was there, she was holding onto a tray of rice balls and looked jumpy and apologetic. Takeru looked up at her and the grizzle in his face all but vanished when he saw her. His eyes were wide, lit up, and for a moment, a flicker of remorse for having raised his voice.

“Sorry, this is a bad time. But, when you're ready to come down stairs, there will be rice balls and other refreshments.” Kiku said and she excused herself just as quickly as she had interrupted.

“I disagree vehemently.” Takeru’s Grandfather insisted, a low growl to his voice.

Takeru glared. He felt like he was pushing at a wall which wouldn’t budge for it was all bricked up and mortared and more. And when that energy expired, he collapsed over the table, burying his head in the crooks of his overlapping, folded arms. The beads - bone yellow and blood orange - clinked on his wrist and glinted in the fluorescence of his bedroom’s light on the ceiling.

This was twice now that Takeru’s Grandfather had to see his own, intimate kin wear that bracelet.

He recalled meeting The Cat as a youth but his youth may as well have been another world with how it changed and collided. He had been playing out in the courtyard with a ball, just bouncing it off every surface available whilst trying not to hit any of the servants or other passerbys until it bounced to the other end. Into what appeared to be a barely open shed. He had crept inside and found a man in a beautiful kimono in a small room but he was caged. He was also holding the handball that he had been playing. They exchanged pleasantries and the man handed back the ball and he left. The man seemed glad to have had a visitor but his visitor was unsettled by the whole exchange, it seemed so ordinarily peculiar.

He would only later learn that person was The Cat but he would learn it at a wake he unintentionally attended.

After that Cat died, the next one was born and after that surreal moment, like a dollop of honey on a wooden spoon, in a summer afternoon, playing handball, the next Cat was born to him and his wife. He liked to think that he had done his best to raise the next Cat but life was arbitrary.

Takeru shouldn’t have been born the Cat but his father died before he even learned he was a father. A freak accident. It could have been anyone. And his mother. His poor mother. She drove herself to madness because of her husband’s death and when her son was born, when she held him in her arms for the first time, still covered in the mire of being born, he did not remain a baby. He grew fur and claws, became a white and ginger kitten.

It was harrowing for her to say the least and for six years, Takeru never saw his grandparents or even the outside world. He was his mother’s little treasure in every sense of possession. His little hands forever checked for stray hairs and claws. His little wrist was the most delicate of all as she checked that the rosary against all that being inhabited by the spirit and jealous of the Cat entailed. The rituals of it all were ceaseless until one day she didn’t come home from grocery shopping and she still hadn’t even ten years later.

“I think you should go down and have something to eat.” Takeru’s Grandfather told him.

“I’m not hungry.” Takeru complained.

“You should eat regardless, then.” his Grandfather continued. “You will need the strength tonight. There’s a storm.”

“I’m not some little kid anymore,” Takeru spat, “I’m not afraid of storms.”

His Grandfather smirked and there was a clash of thunder. Takeru stiffened to the last hair on the back of his neck.

“Then this discussion is over. Until further notice, I want you to stay here, in this lukewarm bath as you called it. If you run away, I will make sure she brings you back.” his Grandfather said.

Takeru lifted his head off the table and his arms, he quirked his brow, “She? Whose she? At least do it yourself, you lazy old fart.” Takeru growled.

His Grandfather ignored him. Gracefully, he got to his feet and Takeru scrambled to join him, a flurry of limbs until he straightened up. They left Takeru’s room and came down stairs to where everyone was. The atmosphere decidedly terse.

Everyone was clustered around the long, low table in the centre of the room, trying to avoid the windows as they banged and rattled. At the moment, it was more the wind than the rain itself which had everyone on edge - assuming it was the weather at all which had made them uncomfortable, and not whatever they had overheard from upstairs between Takeru and his Grandfather. 

Still, Kiku sat on her knees and she already had two plates at the ready as she hailed down Takeru and his Grandfather. Takeru readily sat down next to her as she piled one rice balls onto his plate before sliding it towards him with a smile. Takeru’s grandfather observed her, still standing up, awkwardly hovering close to Shoichi and Jin who were watching similarly twitchy.

“See? No chives since I know you don’t like chives.” Kiku piped up. “Oh, and these ones are tuna-mayo since those are your favourite but this one’s chicken.”

Takeru smiled. “Thanks, Kiku.” he replied but as he accepted the food, his smile faltered. He was thankful for her but she also represented too much to him but he ate the food to be polite. “It’s good.”

“I’m glad to hear it.” Kiku smiled.

With Takeru eating, it could be argued that the atmosphere was easing up from its irrational tenseness. Even Ryoken, who was sitting in the corner, like the mouse that he was, had unhooked his arms from around him and had reached for more of Kiku’s rice balls. She encouraged Ryoken to take more but saying that prickled Takeru, so he grabbed another - one which didn’t appear flecked with chives - and wolfed it down all but immediately.

He didn’t spare a moment to savour it as he swallowed. He was just thankful for the food. It somehow felt that dinner was so long ago but it wasn’t really. The argument that he had had with his Grandfather had simply exacerbated that distance but the rice balls were good. Kiku was a good - no, great - cook. From the moment that she had arrived at this hodgepodge house for the exiles of the Main Kogami manor, Kiku had been charming all of those around her.

Takeru kind of wished he had been there. That moment when she had all but turned up out of the blue and introduced herself to her so-called neighbours; enchanting Shoichi with not only her etiquette but her knowledge of the Chinese Zodiac. His little painted models had been fatefully sitting out in the sun and she had mentioned it to him, talked about how adorable they were but it was a set of twelve rather than thirteen and she was the biggest fan of the Cat from the story. She didn’t want him to be lonely.

But Takeru was the Cat and he wanted to be lonely because bad things happened to those around him when he was anything but lonely.

Yet, since meeting Kiku, Takeru had felt a slight change in him. A transformation different to how he became the Cat and how he became… nevermind that. Kiku was the reason that his fingers were pruning in this lukewarm bath. She treated him with a kindness that he wasn’t used to. Telling him he had a plum on his back and that she wanted to learn things about him, from him, going so far as to do her own research on subjects that he liked such as martial arts. She was dense and happy-go-lucky but her laugh was like nectar. He liked it best when she was smiling, with her golden eyes all lit up like the sun.

Soon enough, Takeru had eaten more than the lion’s share of the rice balls that Kiku had prepared, disgruntling Ryoken in the process but having seen his grandson eat so vigorously, Takeru’s Grandfather was pleased. Yes, there was a tentative serenity to sitting around, having a snack after dinner. There was even laughter and Shoichi, who was standing around, watching, hoping Jin wouldn’t come down from his nap at an inopportune time because it seemed like now was the time to strike. Just when there was a lull in the group.

“Takeru,” his grandfather interrupted the teenagers at the low table, “I want to go outside. To spar.”

“Huh? What?” Takeru half-growled, raising an eyebrow at the absurdity of such a demand. “It’s pouring outside.”

“I think it could be fun,” Shoichi piped up, voice suspiciously airy, “and its not pouring, just… spitting.”

Everyone glanced out the door on that. Opened just enough to let a breeze in because the days had grown humid and stuffy thanks to the spring showers. And it was dark out there but not with thick storm clouds. Just with twilight settling down in the puddles.

“Ooh, you could show me that left hook that you’ve been working on, pretty please?” Kiku emphasised, taking the bait that Shoichi had set out. “You’re always talking about what a great judo master your grandfather is, I want to see this in action.”

“It would be nice.” Takeru said, embarrassedly thinking about how he had been hankering to do just that for the past day since his Grandfather had come around to visit.

“Good.” Ryoken piped up. “I’ll look forward to seeing an old man kick your ass.” Yet despite his stoking remarks, he seemed dubious of this sudden exhibition match between Takeru and his grandfather. 

“Oh, shut up.” Takeru snarled but in a more playful way than usual.

“Should we wake Jin up?” Kiku asked, looking towards Shoichi. “It sounds exciting, he should come down.”

Shoichi waved her off. “Him getting enough rest is more important, besides, his sport of choice is soccer. Not martial arts, I doubt he’d be interested.”

“Yeah, that’s true…” Kiku agreed.

With that settled, despite a strange crackling feeling in the air which wasn’t lightning about to strike, everyone got up and shuffled outdoors. Going from the cool air conditioning indoors, just behind a sliver of glass, to getting out into the soggy grass of the front yard was disconcerting. It was humid - sticky and all encompassing - and getting dark. Storm clouds brewed and despite the subtle strangeness of it all, Takeru and his Grandfather took position in front of their crowd.

Kiku stood with Shoichi who stood with Ryoken who stood by himself, out the front, just by the window. Kiku clasped onto her hands, cooing, as she watched how Takeru and his Grandfather eyed each other down. It was heated and fiery, without words, as they stared, readying their stances, and then pouncing. 

They all gasped as Takeru was entirely outclassed by his grandfather. Takeru couldn’t let a single strike on his grandfather; he seemed so strangely clumsy compared to his grandfather who avoided him with ease. The nimbleness that Kiku, and even Ryoken, associated with Takeru seemed so slow as his grandfather blocked and parried his decisive movements. 

“Appalling.” his Grandfather scolded him.

Takeru gritted his teeth as he tried to force a landing on his Grandfather but he was stopped entirely. His Grandfather took his forearm and grabbed him. It was a reversal of all Takeru’s raw strength funnelled into his own upheaval. Takeru landed with a thud on his back on the ground. Kiku grimaced as she knew she would be the one to do the laundry later.

“Is that it?” Shoichi asked. He scratched his goatee in thought.

Takeru’s Grandfather sank to Takeru’s level. “You’re short-sighted, boy.” he said.

“You don’t say?” Takeru sassed him. “Better get new glasses, I’ve been on the wrong prescription for years then.” He wasn’t even wearing his glasses tonight; they had been annoying him.

His Grandfather rolled his eyes at him. “You need help. To get better at your practice, you need a more holistic and unafraid approach. One more balanced than brute strength. And I’m going to show you how.”

Takeru’s eyes widened as he had the ghost of a question on his tongue, “What…?” he barely managed to eek out of his mouth as he had a terrible realisation of just how helpless he was in this position. His grandfather took his hand and Takeru watched as the bracelet around his wrist, supported and protected, was removed.

It felt as though time slowed for Takeru as he tried to get up, tried to get the bracelet back, tried to resist every inch of what was happening to him.

Shoichi stood, gawking, and guilty. He was acting strange but he couldn’t look away. Completely unlike Ryoken who shut down with what was happening. He looked away, eyes closed tight, and Kiku noticed how he flinched. She had an exclamation or a gasp just beyond her lips but she could only focus on Takeru as he ripped himself from the ground and how his Grandfather let the bracelet drop into the mud. A transformation completely unlike anything Kiku had seen occurred.

When Kiku had first arrived at this house, it had been one accident after another which led into a spiral of female on male contact. Nothing serious. Just hugs and even something as simple as brushing up against Shoichi and then Ryoken and then Takeru had caused the curse upon them to activate. It was silly and kind of funny in hindsight as the pretty looking young men around turned into a dog, a mouse, and a cat respectively. It had been strange but light-hearted.

This, what was happening now, was strange and anything but light-hearted. It was monstrous. 

There was genuine fear and horror in Takeru’s eyes as he tried to get up but his body disobeyed him as he transformed. A transformation that was jagged and unshielded by the mist usually produced by the curse. This was raw and grotesque. A stench emanating through the yard, from Takeru, as his muscles burst and his bones broke, reshaping, until he was anything but human. Or even like an animal.

Ryoken refused to look towards Takeru’s general direction; he had a hand clamped over his mouth and he was gagging. Shoichi was transfixed the same way one became transfixed around disasters like car wrecks. He was pale but stern. Kiku. Kiku was somehow both. Her stomach knotted as she recoiled visibly because of the smell and the sights; she wanted to look away, to alleviate the strange and horrible feeling in her gut, but she was unable to.

Takeru became a creature the likes of which Kiku had never seen.

His proportions were all wrong. On all fours and with a long tail but his appendages were stooped in ways that looked broken. His fingers were elongated and his bones were sharp beneath the taut skin of a sickly orange. And his muzzle was jagged with huge, gleaming eyes that were predatory and afraid.

His Grandfather rose to his full height and he observed coolly as Takeru launched himself from the ground in shame. In fear.

“Ta...keru-kun?” Kiku murmured. She blinked. 

The sound of Takeru’s claws scraping through mud, through tile, through tree branches - wherever he landed in his fleeing leaps and bounds - echoed through the air. It began to rain but the rain barely softened the horrid sounds: the crunching and the breaking. 

“That is the other form of the Cat Spirit,” Takeru’s Grandfather began to explain to the dumbfounded Kiku, “does it disgust you?”

Kiku was silent but she leaned forward slightly with a horrified stare and a slackened jaw.

“Does it scare you?” he asked.

Kiku was silent but she was no longer still. She was propelled forward on something like instinct. She kept her head up and she passed by the bracelet in the mud as she kept going forward, as uneven and rock as her steps were. Where she ignored it, Takeru’s Grandfather picked it up and said his prayers for his grandson on it: not praying to any deity, just a girl whom he, and many others affected and involved with curse, had high hopes for.

Kiku ran into the forest. Chasing after Takeru or what had become of him in this other form. She had no idea. She had no idea that the burden of his Curse ran so deep but it certainly explained some things. In the dark, she was blind to everything but she kept going forward, trying to find Takeru, unfettered even as she fell over and tripped. As she knew she had no idea what she was getting into. The instinct she was acting on was the kindness that she had been taught and she valued so dearly.

She had to keep going, she thought to herself, before bile spiked suddenly in the back of her throat. She got up, on her hands, but she felt her whole body weaken and she threw up in front of herself. She wretched quickly, fouled by the taste and the quickness of how it had come from nowhere but it stopped her altogether.

Confusion was thick and rotten all around her. Kiku didn’t know what to do, what would be right and what would be wrong, that was the truth of the matter as she tried to grapple with what she had seen. The sight of Kyo’s transformation was not something that Kiku would forget soon; the botched way his arms bent and the way his eyes gleamed. Recalling them was more than enough to elicit fear from her, making her skin prickle and her stomach squirm again. But, even so, with tears in her eyes and on unsteady legs, Kiku got up. She clutched onto a tree for leverage as she got up. She kept going.

The rain felt freezing after being so hot. It was pouring down now with no end in sight. Only misery.

Takeru sat on his haunches as far away as he could. He pulled up his knees to his chin and buried himself in himself. He clenched his eyes shut and he felt like a child. Beneath the leathery hide of this monstrous form, he felt like a small and vulnerable child again. Between every lash of cold rain, he could swear that he felt his mother’s breath on him, slowly encroaching on him with a cruel and all encompassing embrace, her hands following his limbs along to that bracelet.

Those memories of his mother raked through him. A growl dribbled out of his mouth in genuine pain of them - and of this transformation. It was anything but painless, it felt like sulphur was in his veins. He hated it and he hated her and he especially hated her love. How it was transfixed on making sure he was protected, insulated, from the big, wide world which would hate him more than she hated him.

Takeru whimpered to himself, all alone, on a little island in the middle of the flooded pond in the forest. He just wanted the world to collapse in on itself so he didn’t have to deal with it. He thrashed about, causing landslides around him with his claws but the senseless violence did little to quell all that fear and fury in his heart. Growling, he looked up, and he was surprised to see someone on the edge of the trees, on the shoreline of the pond.

Kiku stood there, wonky and awkward, holding onto herself and a tree. She was looking out across the murky water to him. She tried calling out to him but her voice was too weak. Takeru’s wasn’t.

He snapped at her, shouting, “Go away!” A monstrous snarl to his voice.

Kiku didn’t even flinch as Takeru’s voice boomed across the water and through the rain. She just stared with this sympathetic look to her face.

“Why… Why the hell’re you following me like nothing’s the goddamn matter?!” Takeru growled.

Kiku tried to call Takeru’s name again but he cut her off with a howl. Her body language drooped. Saddened. And yet she stepped forward, nonetheless. The water was cold and thick around her, even at just her ankles.

“I said go away.” Takeru growled, his voice frayed at the edges now. “What’s wrong with you…? Are you blind? Can’t you smell…?”

Kiku kept coming forward. Takeru watched how she waded through the water, how it ate up to her knees now and how she held herself as she approached. 

“Don’t you hate me? I-I’m creepy and sickening and we both know it.” Takeru whimpered. But then he turned to a roar: “Why can’t you leave me alone?!”

Kiku slowly set foot on the island that Takeru was on. She felt exhausted. Drenched to the bone, the taste of vomit still on her mouth, to say nothing of the stench that reeked around her so she came to her hands and knees. Still, she crawled closer to Takeru, her eyes wide and huge.

“I don’t need any of your pity.” Takeru murmured.

Kiku listened but she kept crawling closer. Mud on her hands and knees, skirt dragging in the mire. She came within a talking distance of Takeru, stood at his paws on the mound, and looked up at him.

“Please…” he begged her. “Please, don’t do this.”

“Takeru-kun, but I…” Kiku murmured as she lifted a hand to him with the intention of stroking him so that he might feel some vain semblance of comfort in the downpour and misery. “But I love-”

Takeru didn’t want to hear it. The way that seemingly simple word tumbled out of her mouth elicited the worst in Takeru. He struck out. He swiped at Kiku, tossing her back as she was nothing but a rag doll before him. Kiku screamed, more from the impact than from the horror of being hurt by her friend.

“Don’t touch me!” Takeru growled. “Get lost!”

Kiku was thrown into the water. A huge splash followed after her and then nothing. Just the harsh pitter patter of the rain hitting the coarse surface of the water. There was a moment where Takeru watched, with regret, before Kiku rose up. She broke through, panting and gasping, in the shallows on the bough of the island, fingers scrunching through the mire below her as she roiled with how she had been thrown and near drowned.

“You’re annoying, I want you gone.” Takeru spat with guilt. “Next time, I’ll hurt you for real. For good…”

Kiku dithered and her hand drew back. She noticed that the sleeve of her shirt was torn and beneath was fresh, stinging scrapes. She was lucky they were only shallow but they hurt like an acid burn, not just a cut. She clamped her hand over them for searing relief but it was curt. She looked up at Takeru again, her golden eyes looked like umber in the dim rain.

Takeru turned his back on her. He didn’t want to see her anymore and he didn’t want her to see him, either. He begged and begged that she would turn tail but all, save for the rain, was still. Silent. 

Then, slowly but surely, with her head hung low, Kiku got up. Water dripped off her in the course of her sluggish movements and she chewed her lower lip. And she made her decision. She turned around and walked off. Her legs like lead as she dragged them through the pond.

Takeru’s ears, long and ribbon-like, anything but feline or human, twitched. He could hear Kiku leave, the sludge that moved around her, and Takeru’s muscles tightened. He wanted to hurt her so bad that she never forgives him. He had hurt her bad enough that she left - and maybe even left for good - and he wanted that and yet, his heart clenched. He didn’t want her to worry about him and Takeru knew - thought - that lashing out was the best option but… but he wanted to look back and he wanted to see Kiku looking back as well. Even if it was just once before moving on for good because things were too wrecked to be fixed or forgiven.

Takeru couldn’t take it anymore. He was sick of losing people; he was sick of pity, he was sick of feeling miserable, and most of all, he was sick of having things forced upon him.

He remembered something his mother said whilst taking his hand, toying with the beads of the bracelet on his wrist, but he couldn’t remember how cruelly she smiled. He remembered her assuring him that no, he was as human as anyone else. It was all just bad magic that  _ this _ just so happens to happen to him. The fact that he became a child again afterwards was proof that the human was not the monster because the monster was temporary. That was trite but what she said afterwards was worse. She told him that she wasn’t scared at all and that she loved him. What rotten lies.

She couldn’t have loved him less and she couldn’t have been terrified more. Takeru was revolted with certainty. 

Every hour of every day, she checked to make sure that abominable bracelet was in place. She would draw the curtains tight and never let him out of her sight. It had been abhorrent but he had been a child. He hadn’t known any better or anything else but now that he did. He didn’t want anything akin to that ever again and he would rage against such sentiments in whatever form that they took before him.

Even if it was Kiku. Kiku who remembered his dislikes and wanted to engage in his likes and told him that he had a plum on his back. Kiku was, Takeru realised with an alien ease, the first person to recognise him and acknowledge the real him. Completely unlike others who had been in his life before who claimed to love him, like his mother.

Takeru buried his head in his hands. A guttural growl leaked out of between the crooked gaps of his teeth all wrong for his bizarre maw. He knew how those memories ended. Without closure. With his mother simply disappearing and how distant, faceless relatives told him, without knowing a thing about him, that his mother loved him above all. 

“Stop it!” Takeru roared, thrashing around, swinging his arms, pounding his fists into the ground below. “I don’t want that kind of love forced on me! I don’t need it...”

He kept murmuring it over and over. I don’t need it. And at the edge of the shallows, where only her ankles were wet, Kiku did hear him. She stopped and she sucked in a breath. She looked over her shoulders, her eyes that were pooled with hot tears, and she surged forward. A force of nature in her own right, outclassing that of the downpour that continued torrentially over them.

Water skirted up the side of her as she ran back through the mire. She slipped and tripped, here and there, but was undeterred. She flung herself onto Takeru. He flinched as he felt her embrace the long spike of his bowed elbow. She buried her face in his grotesque skin. His head bent around with a snarl but Takeru couldn’t bring himself to say something as Kiku hid herself using his limb.

“Let’s go home…” Kiku murmured. “We have to go home.” She reefed her face off him, holding him tighter, her cheeks were flushed as she insisted with the utmost determination, “We have to go home together.”

Takeru blinked and he felt his heart waver.

“O-Otherwise, I have a feeling, Takeru-kun won’t come back home - to that house - ever again.” Kiku said.

She took a sharp breath and she could swear she could hear the front entranceway door of Shoichi’s place slam shut. She cringed. She just knew that Takeru was on the other side of that slam and she didn’t want him to be.

“Stop. Let go.” Takeru growled.

“No!” Kiku shouted, holding him tighter.

“Don’t you get it?!” Takeru snarled.

“No!” Kiku yelled. “No, I don’t get it.”

“Let go of me!” Takeru howled.

Takeru pulled back his arm. His head reared back, maw snapping, teeth glinting, and he hoped to forcibly rip Kiku off him but as he flailed about, Kiku held on. Her legs lolled about, straightly, as she held on for dear life to his arm. She whimpered, afraid, but trying to be brave. He slammed her into the ground, belly first and the blow winded her. She sputtered in the aftermath and Takeru glared. Fierce and vermillion. 

Still face planted, Kiku mumbled, “I’m scared…”

Takeru’s ears pricked up. He had almost missed it but he heard her. Her tiny little voice rife with terror. And despite that terror, Kiku began to get up. Her hands trembled but she still tried to hold onto the monster that was Takeru for anchorage. 

“R-Right now, even though… even though I hear your voice, it doesn’t sound like you.” Kiku murmured. She shook as she got to her knees, still too weak to properly face Takeru. “Y-You’re in a form I’ve never seen before a-and it scares me.”

Takeru stared. His lips were pulled back in an uncertain and feral way, and Kiku embraced him through it. Gladdened that he had stilled.

“But I want to… I want to understand you now.” Kiku said. “Just like you listen to me when I’m discouraged,” she thought of how they had studied together after that big test had wiped them both out and how their marks improved together afterwards, she thought of how Takeru, and Ryoken, had gone to collect her from her grandfather’s house after the renovations and how it felt so wrong until she had seen him again, and finally she thought of New Years, sitting on the rooftop with him, making wishes on the stars and the skylines, “I want you to tell me when you are scared or hurting, or when you’re feeling weak, and let me worry about you! B-Because I want to keep living together with you.”

Takeru examined Kiku through the lens of his slit eye. She trembled, soaked with water and mud, and she looked pathetic. But she was being honest. His heart fluttered somewhere within the arcane structure of this body’s form.

“I want to eat with you, study with you, and worry about you… All those things, I want to continue to live with you.” Kiku sobbed as she embraced Takeru’s malformed arm. Her tears dripped down her face, mingled with the raindrops.

Kiku trembled as she held onto him, a bawl in the back of her throat. Her words, though quiet, managed to silence the world. The clouds above were grey and Takeru stilled with shock as he listened to her impassioned pleading. And there was a change, almost imperceptible but Kiku felt it. She looked up.

Takeru, naked as the day he was born, stood on his own two legs and he spoke not facing her, “It would have been fine if she didn’t love me at all…”

Kiku was slow as she clutched onto Takeru’s lithe arm, he was wet with the slick of the rain. Kiku felt a little bit confused but elated too, with relief, as she looked at him, unacknowledged. Tears pooled in her eyes but she wasn’t crying, even if the muscles of her throat felt soggy and thick.

“Or if she was scared of me…” Takeru continued, almost aimlessly but there was a shine to his voice, as though he were having a divine revelation about his relationships with others. “Being scared would have meant that she was seeing the ugly part of me. But Mom used to love to avoid looking at me. She avoided thinking about it - and I think she avoided thinking about the ugly parts of Dad, too, or maybe I was just the straw that broke her back…” Takeru began to sink, he sat down and Kiku joined him on her knees, still clutching onto him because she wanted him to feel some comfort in her fingertips. “But I wanted her to think it through with me, to worry with me. I wanted to tell her all the painful things but I never could.” His eyes began to water, his lilac-grey irises were glassy. “I wanted to live in the present with her.”

Kiku reached out and cupped Takeru’s face. He was finally able to look at her. Her hair had become untied and was in waves and clumps of cobalt black. Her golden eyes were huge with concern and worry, edged with lingering tears. 

Takeru swallowed a lump in his throat. He had always thought… He had always thought nobody would want to say those things to him, with him. See him as a monster and see him as a cat and seeing him as him as well. Takeru’s heart trembled and his head throbbed. He began to slump forward, into Kiku’s arms. 

For a second, Kiku thought she was going to be kissed but then Takeru hugged her. One arm cupping her back and the other taking her hand as his body, weak and wracked with exhaustion, all but crashed into her. He nuzzled his face against Kiku’s, he heard a tiny gasp and then a little, thank goodness, under her breath. And in that goodness, Takeru felt a sublime peace that he had never truly known until this moment right here in the mud and mire. 

“Kiku…” he whispered to her, grateful. He felt her flowing tears on his bare skin.

The sky began to lighten. Clouds began to part for a feeble but kind sunshine that illuminated the drear of it all and Kiku held Takeru in her arms. He slept, a calico cat, white and ginger, in her arms and he dreamed softly, of dark nightmares melting back to sweet dreams as he was taken home by Kiku.


End file.
